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Reactions to Hezbollah in the Arabic-Speaking World

Reactions to Hezbollah in the Arabic-Speaking World
Mlita, Lebanon

Key takeaways from FilterLabs’ analysis:

  • Sentiment in Lebanese mainstream media around Hezbollah is generally positive.
  • The picture is more mixed on Lebanese social media, where some commentators are blaming the militia for provoking the Israeli incursion. However, the Israeli invasion is deeply unpopular, and seems to be boosting Hezbollah’s popularity in Lebanon overall.
  • Arab-language media across the region also seems broadly supportive of Hezbollah. We saw many posts referring to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) as “Zionist occupation forces” and to dead Hezbollah fighters as being “martyred.” 

With Israeli tanks entering Lebanon, and Iranian missiles raining down on Israel, the Middle East seems to be on the brink of a regional war.

One key question is how much support Hezbollah enjoys, both in Lebanon itself and across the Arabic-speaking world. Using Talisman, our data platform, FilterLabs has been looking for answers. 

In Monday’s newsletter, we took a look at how attitudes towards Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s recently assassinated leader, differed between Lebanon and its neighbors. Today, we broaden the focus and take a look at sentiment toward Hezbollah more broadly.

Lebanon

In discourse around Hezbollah in Lebanese news media, sentiment has been relatively stable:

It’s important to note that the negative average sentiment score does not necessarily mean that the underlying articles were critical of Hezbollah. On the contrary, most strongly negative articles were critical of Israel, or of the West for supporting it. For instance, a headline declared, “A year after October 7, Israel continues its brutality and the Gaza scenario threatens Lebanon.”

Sentiment on Lebanese social media was more varied:

Most mentions of Hezbollah also mention the Israeli missile attacks on Lebanon and the threat of a ground invasion. We found that many artifacts during the period of falling sentiment between September 29 and October 2 reflected a great deal of fear and anxiety.

Sentiment began to tick up again around 10/3. One X account boasted that Hezbollah was getting the better of the IDF, while another quoted Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, calling Hezbollah fighters “his sons.” 

In general, FilterLabs found two, slightly contradictory trends in Lebanese social media conversation. On the one hand, there was criticism of Hezbollah for being the impetus for Israeli military response, especially in the days before the ground invasion. On the other hand, there was more support for Hezbollah as Israeli attacks increased. Public opinion regarding Hezbollah was mixed, but it might trend increasingly positive in the face of ongoing Israeli aggression. That could further entrench Hezbollah and prolong the conflict.

Across the Region

In addition to Lebanon, FilterLabs looked at sentiment around Hezbollah across the Arabic-language media sphere. 

FilterLabs found that sentiment was negative but steady in both mainstream media sources…

…and on social media:

The artifacts underlying social and news media were similar in important ways. First, as with online discourse in Lebanon, the sentiment in both news articles and social media posts was often coded as negative but wasn’t necessarily negative toward Hezbollah. Moreso, the news is negative about the situation, and especially toward Israel. On platforms like Telegram, users posted statements from Islamic militia groups and Iranian leaders. One, for example, quoted Ayatollah Khamenei: “The criminal Zionist gang has reached the conclusion that it will not achieve victory over Hamas and Hezbollah.”

Second, FilterLabs found some consistent language usage across Arabic-language discourse, in the news and on social media.  Fallen Hezbollah militants (as well as Lebanese civilians who were killed) were often referred to not as casualties but as martyrs. Many artifacts referred to the IDF as “Zionist occupation forces”—perhaps unsurprising given that the context of most of these artifacts was a discussion of Israel’s attacks on Lebanon and Hezbollah, or of the conflict in Gaza.

In sum, while in Lebanon we detected an undercurrent of frustration with Hezbollah for its role in provoking Israeli attacks, for the most part Arabic-language media and social media users across the region are taking Hezbollah’s side without reservation. The result is that—whatever the military situation may be—the militia group will not lack popular, region-wide support. 

Take a closer look on Talisman

You can now view this newsletter’s data in our flagship data analysis platform, Talisman! We’ve built a custom dashboard with all of the charts analyzed in this post. If you don’t already have a Talisman subscription, you can sign up here — and for a limited time, a Basic subscription is free.